Stuart snipped some wildflowers and plunked them into a jar. “We could hire someone to roll it here.”
“I feel that takinche kicking in already.”
“Renata and I were hoping to have you over for dinner tonight. You probably think that sounds perfectly awful now, but I’m fairly sure you’ll be hungry by six. We’ll have something mild, fettucine or a risotto.”
“Real neighborly,” he said.
He smiled. “You can say that without irony! Aren’t you quaint!”
“You know medicines?”
Stuart looked at him oddly.
He heavily sat down on the dining room chair. “Why I said that is Renata used a word: pharmacopoeia? Means you know about pills and such, I take it.”
Stuart blinked slowly and said, “What a pity that I do.”
Atticus shifted to the right and got out his wallet from his trousers pocket. Tucked under a flap was the pharmacy receipt María found on the bathroom floor upstairs. He held it out to Stuart. “You know what this would be for?”
He read it quickly and a shade seemed to go down in his face. He hobbied as he said, “We have cancer cures here, quote unquote, that you can’t get in the United States. And if you’re desperate enough, you get a prescription for that. Whose is it?”
“Was it Scott’s?”
“We’d have known if Scott was that ill, wouldn’t we?”
Atticus smoothed his hair with his hand. “Well, I’ve seen people who keep it pretty quiet. Don’t want to make a fuss. You know.”
“That hardly describes your son, does it.” Stuart shifted flowers in the jar until he seemed satisfied, and then he gathered the cuttings into his hand as he said, “We were desperate rivals, Scott and I. We fought all the time.”
“You were both in love with the same woman.”
“Can’t fool you.” He went into the kitchen and threw the flower cuttings into the trash. He said from the kitchen, “She has complete power over me. I find it frustrating, but I presume it was just as frustrating for Scott.” Stuart folded his arms at the doorway. “One thing I’ll always regret is the twinge of gladness I felt when I heard he was dead.” High color flushed his face. “Common decency deserts me on occasion.” He tried to smile, but his mouth trembled. “Even now, for example.”
Atticus fiercely stared at him and then offered, “You do try to be honest, don’t you.”
“Rude is more like it, I’m afraid.” Stuart put his hands on a dining room chair and faced him squarely as he said, “I have cancer.” He put on a happy face as he held up his pack of Salem cigarettes like it was show-and-tell, then frowned as he shook one out and flipped the pack back onto the dining room table.
“I’m real sorry.”
“Well I’m angry. Absolutely furious, if truth be told. I guess I’m in the first stage of grief.”
“Have you told Renata?”
“Oh, that would be fetching, wouldn’t it.” He dug out a fancy lighter from his front pants pocket, got a flame, hungrily inhaled on the cigarette, and coughed wrackingly. His face was crimson as he said, “Quod erat demonstrandum.”
Atticus was silent, and then he asked, “Where were you Wednesday night?”
Stuart faced him with wonder and then forced a laugh. “My God, you’re detecting! You’re a sleuth!”
Atticus just stared.
Stuart inhaled his cigarette again and funneled smoke out the side of his mouth. “With Renata and Scott at The Scorpion and at the Marriott for the fiesta and the Williams play. And then I went to the bookstore and finished up some paperwork.”
“You there for a long time?”
“Yes, from about ten o’clock to one-thirty or so. Tweaking the debits and credits, if you must know. My financial shape isn’t any more healthy than I am. My thanks in advance for your sympathy.” Stuart got an ashtray from the kitchen and gently carved the ash from his cigarette. “Are you trying to establish if I have an alibi?”
“Yep.”